Most organizations (e.g., public corporations, private companies, government agencies, educational institutions, etc.), regardless of size and type, rely on one or more reference numbers in various aspects of their operation. Examples of reference numbers that are commonly used include identification (ID) numbers, account numbers, product inventory codes, and the like. The reference numbers allow information management systems and other computer-based applications within these organizations to locate, retrieve, organize, and otherwise manipulate data for the organizations. Indeed, without such reference numbers, it would be difficult for these organizations to carry out even simple or routine tasks in many cases.
Unfortunately, unanticipated problems sometime arise with respect to the reference numbers. For example, organizations that set up their reference numbering system using one particular technology may later see their hardware and/or software rendered obsolete by advances in technology. Other problems may come about simply as a result of necessary diversification in a competitive market. For example, the original designers of the system simply did not intend for it to handle the types of products currently offered by the organization.
One particular problem that may arise is depletion of unique reference numbers. For example, an organization that uses a 5-digit employee ID number only has 100,000 unique values with which to work. As the organization continues to hire employees over time, the number of available unique employee IDs will be exhausted. A temporary solution for this shortage is to reuse already expired or retired employee ID numbers. However, in addition to being only a short-term fix, reuse may create other problems for the organization's data processing and information management systems. For example, an expired or retired employee ID number may be confused or mistaken in some systems for the ex-employee to whom the expired employee ID number was previously assigned
Alternatively, for employee ID numbers that are purely numeric, text may be used to expand the range of possible numbers. Unfortunately, many organizations decided early on to store their employee ID numbers and other numeric reference numbers using a data storage format having a fixed length in order to conserve data storage space. An example of such a format is binary coded decimal (BCD), also called packed numbers in some computer programming languages (e.g., COBOL). As is commonly known in the art, a BCD number may be represented using only four bits (nibble), whereas text requires a full byte. To allocate a full byte for text in a BCD storage format would render it inoperable in many cases.
Accordingly, what is needed is a way to increase the range of an organization's available unique reference numbers. More particularly, what is needed is a way to increase the range of an organization's available unique reference numbers without altering existing data storage size requirements.